Elon Musk only wants good drivers in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta

It seems that Elon Musk is tired of San Francisco tech bros sleeping in the back seat of their Teslas with Autopilot enabled. He really wants good responsible drivers to test the car maker’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta.

This is according to a tweet from Musk himself, as reported by Inside EVs. In it, Musk responded to an inquirer on Twitter asking the electric car and rocket mogul when he could get in on the FSD beta. Musk replied by saying that current drivers would need to enable the Tesla insurance calculator for seven days, in which the company could then assess how responsible of a driver they actually were. If approved, Tesla will let drivers into the FSD beta.

To allow Tesla to monitor one’s telemetry data, all users have to do is press the Beta button, available from version 10.1, and drive safely the following seven days. 

Unfortunately, FSD isn’t automatically available for all Tesla owners. There’s some cost and hardware requirements. 

Owners must own a car with Tesla’s newest computer, Hardware 3, and pay either $10,000 to enable to feature or $199 per month. Those without Hardware 3 can pay $1,500 to upgrade their car’s internal computing systems.

There’s a reason Tesla wants good drivers behind the wheel during the FSD beta period. Already, videos have sprung up online of FSD not behaving correctly, swerving suddenly and potentially hitting pedestrians. Luckily, in the video below, the driver was able to quickly take over and adjust. 

At the very least, engineers at Tesla are moving fast with software improvements. Musk tweeted out that version 10.0.1 FSD beta updates were rolling out. 

The criteria of what makes a good driver was not detailed. But likely it’ll involve obeying the speed limit, following road signs and driving defensively. Of course, as the beta progresses, videos of any major mishaps will immediately find their way online. 

There’s still no date or estimate on when the FSD beta will end. But given the complexity and potential regulatory concerns, we suspect it might be years out.